Aries – Journal for the Study

of Western Esotericism 15 (2015) 109–135

ARIES
brill.com/arie

Ancient Hermetism and Esotericism

Christian H. Bull
University of Oslo
Christian.Bull@teologi.uio.no

Abstract

The Hermetic treatises have played a considerable role in the history of Western Eso-
tericism. However, according to the influential definition of Antoine Faivre, Western
Esotericism is a historical phenomenon originating from the fifteenth century, when
Marsilio Ficino translated the Greek Corpus Hermeticum into Latin. The question, then,
is if the term “esotericism” has any utility for understanding the original context of the
Hermetic treatises, in the first centuries of the Common Era. The present contribution
aims to give a summary account of research into ancient Hermetism, and consider the
Hermetic treatises in light of the six elements of Faivre’s conception of Western Eso-
tericism. These six elements can serve as heuristic tools to single out certain salient
features of the treatises, but do not really help us gain a deeper understanding of them
or the greater phenomenon of Hermetism. However, recalling the work of Hugh Urban,
it will be suggested that we should use “esotericism” as an analytical term designating
a social strategy, characterized by the creation of a closed social space, a claim to pos-
sess a superior faculty of knowledge, and rites of initiation to obtain this faculty and
become a new human. The advantage of this second approach is that it permits us
to compare the social strategies operative in the Hermetic treatises with those of other
esoteric traditions, including those that do not have any historical affiliations with Her-
metism.

Keywords

Egyptian Religion – Hermeticism – Hermetism – magic – social associations – Western

Esotericism

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi: 10.1163/15700593-01501008

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…
And you, Tat, Asclepius and Ammon, cover the divine mysteries with
silence in the secrets of the heart, and conceal them with stillness.
hermes trismegistus, Asclepius 321

∵
As with so many terms in the scientific study of religion, the meaning of
the term “esotericism” has been much debated. In the historical definition of
Antoine Faivre, Western Esotericism denotes a current of thought prevalent
in the Occident following the arrival of the Greek Corpus Hermeticum in Flo-
rence in 1462, and its subsequent translation into Latin at the hands of Marsilio
Ficino.2 It has been argued that the authority of Hermes Trismegistus, famously
depicted as the tutor of Moses on the mosaic on the floor of Siena cathedral, was
used to sanction branches of knowledge viewed with suspicion by the church,
such as the “occult sciences” of astrology, alchemy and magic, which flourished
between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although other traditions
such as Christian Kabbalah enjoyed comparable popularity, and were partly
fused with Hermetic teachings, the influence of the Hermetic literature (“Her-
metica”) was such that the terms “Hermetism” and “Hermeticism” have been
used as near synonyms with Western Esotericism in the history of research.3
However, if we are to consider the phenomenon of Hermetism in its original
context, probably in the first centuries of our era, it would be anachronistic
to subscribe it to the rubric of Faivre’s historical definition, which was tailor-
made for historical phenomena following the fifteenth century. Instead, we
must consider esotericism as a typological concept, operationalized so as to
highlight certain salient features in phenomena that might then be the subject

1 All translations are my own, unless otherwise stated, based on the original texts in Greek,
Latin and Coptic found in Nock & Festugière, Hermetica, and Mahé, Hermès en Haute-Égypte.
The following abbreviations will occur throughout this text: Ascl.= Asclepius; Corp. Herm. =
Corpus Hermeticum; nhc = Nag Hammadi Codex; Stob. Herm. = Stobaei Hermetica; Def. Herm.
= Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius.
2 Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism; idem, The Eternal Hermes. For a critique of Faivre’s
paradigm, see McCalla, ‘Antoine Faivre and the Study of Esotericism’.
3 This is of course the “grand narrative” of Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition,
which has been widely criticized since; see Hanegraaff, ‘Beyond the Yates Paradigm’, 15ff.

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of cross-cultural comparison. The questions then arise of whether consider-

ing the Hermetica in light of such a typological concept “esotericism” will tell
us anything new about Hermetism, and, mutatis mutandis, whether the Her-
metica can inform our notion of esotericism as a trans-cultural comparative
concept.
However, before we attempt to answer these questions, we should give
a summary account of ancient Hermetic literature and the challenges they
present to modern scholarship, particularly regarding the identities and mo-
tives of their authors. Thereafter, we shall consider the Hermetica in light of
Faivre’s influential six elements of esotericism, here used merely as a heuristic
tool to highlight some of the most salient Hermetic features,4 and proceed to
evaluate its usefulness—and that of the term “esotericism”—for understand-
ing ancient Hermetism. As will become clear, “esotericism,” properly construed
with respect to social dynamics, can be useful indeed for approaching Her-
metism, which is a phenomenon whose underlying social reality we can only
infer by careful reading of the Hermetica themselves.

1 The Hermetica and Hermetism

The Hermetica are a group of texts whose common feature is that they contain
dialogues, revelations, or epistles supposedly delivered by Hermes Trismegis-
tus and/or his pupils, Tat, Asclepius, Ammon, Isis and Horus. In some cases
we also find the teacher of Hermes appearing, named variously Poimandres,
Nous (“mind”), and Agathodaimon (“the good daimon”). All of these figures
are Egyptian gods, with Hermes and Asclepius being respectively the Greek
designations for the Egyptian god Thoth and the deified architect Imhotep.5
However, there is some ambiguity whether the interlocutors are eternal gods
or human beings who have become divinized because of their wisdom, in line
with the popular euhemerizing tendency of the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

4 Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism, 10 ff.

5 Ascl. 37–38; Stob. Herm. 23.6. Ammon is Amun, Tat is probably a version of Thoth. Van den
Kerchove, La voie d’Hermès, 53–54, suggests that the name Tat might derive, via Old Coptic,
from djed, the pillar of Osiris, which (to me) explains little. Poimandres probably derives from
“Poremanres”, the Greek rendering of the throne-name of the divinized Amenemhat iii (see
Jackson, ‘A New Proposal for the Origin of the Hermetic God Poimandres’; Bull, ‘The Tradition
of Hermes’, 118–128). Agathodaimon was a designation for several Egyptian gods, for example
Sobek, Shay and Shu, see Bull, ‘The Tradition of Hermes’, 49, 61, 122, 124, 163.

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One of the main questions in the history of research on the Hermetica has
been the degree of “authentic” Egyptian influence on the texts. Even though
the cast of characters is Egyptian, and sometimes refers explicitly to Egyptian
traditions and imagery, the texts were all originally written in Greek, and draw
upon an eclectic mix of Platonic, Stoic and Neopythagorean tenets. The ratio-
nale for this is that philosophers such as Pythagoras and Plato were reputed
to have derived their philosophies from their studies in Egyptian temples. Such
traditions appeared very early, as reported by, for example, Herodotus and Her-
modorus,6 and by the Imperial Age a study-trip to Egypt was a nearly compul-
sory part of the biography of famous philosophers.7 In other words, the Her-
metica present themselves as the Egyptian sources of the Greek sages, while in
reality it is the other way around.8 This discrepancy was noted by the Neopla-
tonic philosopher Porphyry (later third-century ce), who pointed out that the
supposedly primordial Egyptian wisdom was formulated in an unmistakably
Greek philosophical idiom. Porphyry’s criticism cannot be found in the sur-
viving portion of his critique of theurgic ritual, the Letter to Anebo, but can be
deduced from the response issued by his younger contemporary, Iamblichus,
writing under the pseudonym of an Egyptian high priest (Abammon),9 in a
treatise commonly known as De mysteriis Aegyptiorum, Chaldaeorum, Assyri-
orum, a title supplied by Marsilio Ficino in the fifteenth century.10 Iamblichus
writes:

Those documents, after all, which circulate under the name of Hermes
contain Hermetic doctrines (hermaïkas doxas), even if they often employ
the terminology of the philosophers; for they were translated from the
Egyptian tongue by men not unversed in philosophy.11

6 Herod. 2.81; Diog. Laert. 3.6.

7 Hornung, The Secret Lore of Egypt, 22ff.; Assmann, Weisheit und Mysterium; Tait, ‘The
Wisdom of Egypt: Classical views’.
8 In fact, few of the Hermetica explicitly refer to Egypt, but the function of making Hermes
Trismegistus the author is to place the treatises in the Egyptian past, see Bull, ‘The
Tradition of Hermes’, 15–20.
9 To my knowledge, this has not yet been pointed out by scholars.
10 See now the new Budé editions by Saffrey and Segonds, Porphyre: Le lettre à Anébon
l’Égyptien, and, Jamblique: Réponse à Porphyre. The editors claim in the introductions that
the reference to the Egyptians Anebo and Abammon is merely an Egyptian fiction, a pious
nod to Egypt as the birthplace of gods.
11 Myst. 8.4, trans. Clarke, Dillon and Hershbell, Iamblichus: De Mysteriis, 315.

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Likewise, at the very beginning of the work, Iamblichus claims that the
books of Hermes were in reality written by Egyptian priests who were wont to
attribute all their writings to their patron god.12 Even though the claim that the
Hermetica were translated from Egyptian is manifestly false, it remains a pos-
sibility that among their authors were Hellenized Egyptian priests, defending
their reputation as true philosophers by attributing their texts to the Egyp-
tian Hermes, the putative source of the philosophies of Pythagoras and Plato.13
Certainly we know that Egyptian priests did participate in Greco-Roman philo-
sophical discourse, profiting from their reputation as inheritors of the ancient
wisdom of the pharaohs.14 We also know that Egyptian priests were authors
of magical papyri in Demotic, Greek, and Old Coptic, which contain material
similar to that contained in the Hermetica, including the Hermetic Prayer of
Thanksgiving.15
Another central question in the scholarship on Hermetism regards the inter-
nal doctrinal consistency between the various treatises ascribed to Hermes and
his disciples; to wit, a reader of the Hermetica in toto faces conflicting injunc-
tions as to how one should view the world and one’s place in it. Early scholars
such as Thaddeus Zielinski and Wilhelm Bousset maintained that there were
two main groups of texts, containing mutually exclusive teachings: the “Gnos-
tic”, dualistic, and pessimistic texts, and, on the other hand, the “philosophical”,
monistic, and optimistic texts (while a third set of texts mixed the two ten-
dencies).16 This distinction was further elaborated by perhaps the twentieth-
century’s most influential scholar of Hermetism, André-Jean Festugière.17 How-
ever, the theory has been challenged in the last three decades by Garth Fowden
and Jean-Pierre Mahé, who both consider the different texts to belong to vari-
ous stages on a cohesive “Way of Hermes”, an initiatory way of spiritual forma-
tion.18 In the view of both of these authors, this way would lead the candidate
from initially seeing the cosmos as good, an image of god, and then progres-
sively develop a more negative view on matter, the body, and the world, osten-
sibly no longer important for the upward journey of the soul. This theory of a

12 Myst. 1.1.
13 See, e.g. ibid., 1.1, 1.2, 7.2, 8.1; Ter. An. 2.
14 The classical example is the Egyptian priest (and ostensibly Stoic philosopher) Chaere-
mon; see van der Horst, Chaeremon.
15 See Dieleman, Priests, Tongues, and Rites.
16 Zielinski, ‘Hermes und die Hermetik ii’, 26, 57; Bousset, review of J. Kroll, 748ff.
17 E.g., Festugière, La révélation d’ Hermès Trismégiste, 4:54.
18 Mahé, Hermès en Haute-Égypte, 2:455 ff.; idem, ‘La voie d’immortalité’; Fowden, The Egyp-
tian Hermes, 97–104, 111 ff.

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way of Hermes has so far not been seriously challenged, although Tage Petersen
questioned the usability of the term dualism for the texts commonly so-called,
and instead postulated an overriding monistic tendency even in these texts.19
For my own part, I have suggested that the way in fact moves from a pedagogi-
cal dualism, in which the disciple is taught to alienate himself20 from the body
and the world, so as to be able to achieve visionary experiences on the higher
stages of the way, at which point the value of the body and the world is reaf-
firmed.21
The question of whether the various Hermetic treatises belong to mutu-
ally exclusive clusters containing widely different dogmas, or if they in fact
belong to a coherent way of spiritual formation, is crucial for the third main
question that has preoccupied Hermetic studies: were there Hermetic groups,
meeting regularly for spiritual instruction and ritual practice, or are the texts
mere literary exercises, evoking rituals that were never performed and a god
that was never actively worshiped? The latter thesis was held by Zielinski, Bous-
set, and Festugière, and thus dominant up until the eighties, whereas Fowden
and Mahé have ushered in a new consensus that there were in fact Hermetic
groups, though the exact nature of these groups remains uncertain. One impor-
tant early twentieth-century scholar of Hermetism, Richard Reitzenstein, first
proposed that Egyptian priests were behind the formation of Gnostic-Hermetic
groups. Under criticism, he recanted and instead formulated the influential
notion of Lesemysterium: here, the mere reading of the texts was meant to pro-
vide the benefits of initiatory rites, without the need for actual ritual practice—
a sort of “do it yourself” mystery cult.22 Against this theory, briefly put, is the
fact that the most initiatory texts, such as On the rebirth (Corp. Herm. 13) and
Discourse of the Eighth and the Ninth (nhc vi,6), emphasize the active role of
the spiritual master as a mystagogue, who must call down divine power into
the disciple for him to be able to attain union with the divine and beatific
visions. There is also in several treatises a marked distrust of words as unable

19 Petersen, ‘Alt kommer jo på øjet an, der ser’, passim.

20 In this article I will use the masculine pronoun when referring to anonymous Hermetic
masters of disciples, since the prototypical master and disciples are male. However, it
is quite possible that women would also be involved; we find no view in the Hermet-
ica of women as somehow “deficient”, as is so common in both Christian and Greco-
Roman literature, and indeed Isis is teaching her son Horus in some of the texts (Stob.
Herm. 23–27). See Bull, ‘The Notion of Mysteries in the Formation of Hermetic Tradition’,
413ff.
21 On the relative coherency of the Hermetica, see Bull, ‘The Tradition of Hermes’, 179ff.
22 Reitzenstein, Poimandres; idem, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen, 149.

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to convey the divine realities, conceived of as ineffable. This would imply that
merely reading a Hermetic text would not be sufficient, and instead there
is an injunction to ‘find a guide that can lead you to the doors of knowl-
edge’.23
Appropriate, then, is the methodological distinction between the term “Her-
metism” and Hermetic literature: following a proposal made by Kevin van
Bladel, we should only use the term “Hermetism” with regards to the hypothet-
ical, socio-historical ritual tradition from which the literary transmission of the
Hermetica derives.24 That is, we should be mindful that all we possess are the
surviving texts that can only indirectly inform us about the actual practices of
groups of Hermetists—if such groups indeed existed. This distinction is impor-
tant to avoid the confusing multitude of texts, thoughts and practices that have
at some point been labeled as “Hermetism” due to some intuitively perceived
family resemblance to our corpus of texts.

2 Ancient Hermetism in the Scholarship of Western Esotericism

The uncertainties surrounding ancient Hermetism have not deterred scholars

working on the reception of the Hermetica, particularly regarding the com-
plex of phenomena dubbed “Western Esotericism”. Indeed, many anthologies
on Hermet(ic)ism open with chapters devoted to ancient Hermetism,25 and
monographs dealing with the history of Hermes Trismegistus from antiquity
to the contemporary period have recently appeared.26 However, any continu-
ity in the Hermetic ritual tradition itself seems to have been ruptured with
the demise of pagan cults in the fifth century. The late-fifth-century, Neo-
platonic philosophers Asclepiades and Heraiscus may have been among the
last to have any connection with the ritual tradition, although they may only
have been interested readers, after which Hermetism was remembered exclu-
sively through textual transmission.27 The legend of Hermetists remaining in
Haran (modern-day southern Turkey) until the Arab invasion is likely a myth,

23 Corp. Herm. 7.2.

24 Van Bladel, The Arabic Hermes, 17–22.
25 Van den Broek & Hanegraaff, Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times;
Merkel & Debus, Hermeticism and Renaissance; van den Broek, Quispel & van Heertum,
From Poimandres to Jacob Böhme.
26 Eberling, The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus; Moreschini, Hermes Christianus.
27 Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes, 184–186.

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as Kevin van Bladel has shown.28 Archaeologists have uncovered no mate-

rial traces of any Hermetic ritual community. Thus, the sole features uniting
ancient Hermetism and later Hermeticism—however one might define the lat-
ter phenomenon—seem to be the continued authority of the name Hermes
Trismegistus and an active interest in the books and teachings written in his
name.
There is thus no continuity between the religious practices developing from
the rediscovery of the Hermetic literature in the Renaissance and the Hermetic
ritual tradition of antiquity, which has often been referred to as an “Alexandrine
Hermetic Lodge”.29 This latter notion is in fact deeply problematic, since it is
uncertain that Alexandria played any crucial role in ancient Hermetism. The
fact is that we do not know the precise origins of Hermetism, other than that
it was Egyptian, to judge from references both internal and external to the
texts. Alexandria was of course a melting-pot of Greek and Egyptian culture,
but by the time the Hermetica appeared (at least in the first half of the second
century ce), the entirety of Egypt was to some degree Hellenized. In fact, the
few geographical references in the Hermetica are to Hermopolis and Thebes,
both in Upper Egypt.30 Moreover, papyrus Mimaut (pgm iii) which contains
the Hermetic Prayer of Thanksgiving, was likely found in Thebes, together
with several other magical papyri with clear relations to the Hermetica—the
so-called “Thebes-cache”.31 We can therefore be fairly confident that Hermetica
were read in this area, and quite possibly composed there. After all, Strabo
informs us that the priests of Thebes were wont to attribute their astronomical
and philosophical teachings to Hermes.32 Hermopolis was the second largest
city in Egypt, after Alexandria, and we have papyri showing that the city council
there made oaths to Hermes Trismegistus, possibly alluding to the Poimandres
at one point.33 Also, a high priest of Thoth in Hermopolis, corresponding in

28 Van Bladel, The Arabic Hermes, 64–114.

29 See, e.g., van den Broek, ‘Religious Practices’, 77ff., 95; Quispel, ‘From the Hermetic Lodge’;
idem, ‘Hermes Trismegistus’, 148, 156; idem, ‘Reincarnation and Magic’, 163, 170, 177, 186,
207; Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism, 51 ff.
30 Ascl. 38; nhc vi,6.61.18 ff. There is also reference to a temple of Asclepius near the isle of
crocodiles, possibly in the Fayyum. It is also likely that the enigmatic Poimandres derives
from the Fayyumic deity Porremanres, the deified Amenemhat iii (see Jackson, ‘The
Origins of the Name Poimandres’). Furthermore, there is mentioned one Harnebeschênis,
i.e. Horus of Letopolis, as king of philosophy (Stob. Herm. 26.9).
31 Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes, 168–173; Dieleman, Priests, Tongues, and Rites, 11ff.; Tait,
‘Theban Magic’, 169–182.
32 Strab. 17.1.46.
33 P. Vind. Gr. 12563. See Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes, 175; Kingsley, ‘Poimandres’, 56.

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the early fourth century ce with someone who is ‘all wise in the wisdom of the
Greeks’, refers to his god as Hermes Trismegistus.34 Thus, other than the fact
that Alexandrians like Didymus the Blind, Cyril of Alexandria, Asclepiades and
Heraiscus had read Hermetica,35 there is nothing that militates for Alexandria
as the point of origin for Hermetism, whereas several factors point toward
Upper Egypt.
A second problem is the “lodge” terminology itself. This word, deriving
from the Medieval Latin lobia, has clear Masonic connotations; it implies that
there existed a larger Hermetic organization in antiquity with chartered local
branches, while we do not at all know this to be the case. Rather, a sort of
social formation in which we would likely find something like Hermetism
practiced would be the ancient voluntary associations, denoted in Greek by
terms such as collegium, thiasos or eranos.36 Such associations were commonly
formalized with a list of members, rules and regular fees. Another possibility
is that the Hermetists were more informal, consisting merely of adherents
gathered around a charismatic teacher, and dispersing when the teacher died
or moved away.37 However, the existence of initiatory rites seems to point
towards a higher degree of formalization than that. As documents pertaining
to voluntary associations in Egypt continue to come to light, we will hopefully
in the future have a clearer picture of the organization of Hermetic religious
communities.

3 Six Central Elements of Esotericism in the Hermetica

What then do we learn about the Hermetica and its background, as viewed
in terms of “Western esotericism” sensu Faivre? His model, featuring six “ele-
ments” of esotericism, has been derived inductively from his evaluation of

34 P. Herm. Rees 2–3. See Rees, Papyri from Hermopolis, 2–7; Matthews, The Journey of
Theophanes, 19–23; Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes, 176, 192.
35 Did. Alex., Trin. 2.3.26–28 (Seiler), 2.27, 3.1.776a (Migne); see Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes,
179f.; Cyr. Alex., C. Jul. 1.548b–549c, 2.580b, 2.597d–600b, and 4.701ab.; Damascius, Vit. Isid.
243.
36 Kloppenborg and Wilson (eds.), Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World, 1; Mar-
tin, ‘Secrecy in Hellenistic Religious Communities’, 102ff. For useful surveys, see Ascough,
Harland, and Kloppenborg, Associations in the Greco-Roman World, and the ongoing
multi-volume Greco-Roman Associations: Texts, Translations, and Commentary, published
by de Gruyter.
37 See Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes, 193.

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currents in which Hermetic literature was influential, and so it will come as

no surprise that we will find these elements in the Hermetic corpus. Yet an
exposition of these elements in the Hermetica might be of some heuristic
value, allowing us to present the features of the Hermetica that have an air de
famille with other esoteric currents. Faivre’s six elements are, in short, the fol-
lowing:38 (1) “Correspondences”: everything is mystically interconnected; (2)
“Living Nature”: nature is animated by a central force that might be tapped
into; (3) “Imagination and Mediations”: the esotericist imagines with his inner
eye the forces that interconnect the universe, and imagined as symbols and
images these forces can be used to mediate between the esotericist, nature,
and the divine world; (4) “Transmutation”: the inner being of the esotericist is
transmuted through rites of initiation and/or esoteric knowledge. These four
elements are considered to be necessary and sufficient for a text or teaching
to be considered esoteric. In addition, Faivre lists two more elements that are
commonly found but not essential, namely (5) “Concordance”: the belief that
there is a common core to all religions derived from the perennial philosophy;
and (6) “Transmission”: esoteric knowledge is transmitted from master to dis-
ciple, in a chain going back to an authoritative source.

3.1 Correspondences: As Above, so Below

The famous Hermetic aphorism ‘as above, so below’ can in fact not be found in
the ancient Hermetica, only appearing in the Tabula Smaragdina, which is first
attested in the eighth century Arabic Book of the Secrets of Creation.39 However,
even if the aphorism does not derive from Greek sources, it would no doubt
have been recognized by the authors of the Hermetica, where we find similar
sentiments such as this: ‘what is below has been arranged in sympathy with
what is above by the Creator’.40 The sympathy between what is below and what
is above is formulated in two ways: in terms of iconistic resemblance and in
terms of emanations. The former is the most common, and is formulated in the
central tenet that the cosmos is an image of god, and humankind is an image of
the cosmos. This “likeness with god” (homoiôsis theô), which is also common in
contemporary philosophical schools, gives the foundations of the aspirations

38 See Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism, 10–15.

39 Weisser, Das “Buch über das Geheimnis der Schöpfung” von Pseudo-Apollonios von Tyana;
Kahn, La table d’émeraude et sa tradition alchimique, xiii; van Bladel, The Arabic Hermes,
170; Bull, ‘Hemmelig Tekst’, 175–176; Ebeling, The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus,
46–47, 96.
40 Stob. Herm. 23.68.

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ancient hermetism and esotericism 119

of a human to become not only like god, but an actual divinity, as well as the
reverence felt for the cosmos as the second god.41
On the other hand, the divine is represented on earth not only through rep-
resentations, but through emanations from above to the below. In the famous
text known as the Poimandres, the primal human was emitted as a nous (Grk.,
“mind”) from the divine nous down into its material envelope, and one is given
the hope of eventually re-ascending to this transcendent original source.42
The nous here below is considered to be contiguous with the nous above.43
Also, there are astral emanations personified as demons that affect all mate-
rial things, including those humans who do not possess a pure nous.44 These
demons are often considered in a negative light, causing disturbing passions
that affect humans, but as agents of fate they can be either good or bad.45 In
the famous Asclepius, which was the only Hermeticum known in the Latin
west before the Renaissance, demon emissaries of the gods are evoked to enter
into statues, which are then worshiped as earthly gods in Egyptian temples and
which cause Egypt to be considered as the temple of the world and an image of
heaven.46 This was of course one of the passages that aroused the ire of Augus-
tine.

3.2 Living Nature: The Dark, Descending Nature

Nature (physis) has a somewhat ambiguous status in the Hermetica. In the
cosmogony of the aforementioned Poimandres, a horrific darkness separates
itself from the primordial pure light and turns into moist nature.47 This has
often been considered as a catastrophic event similar to the fall of Sophia
in several contemporary Judeo-Christian myths.48 However, nature is not all
bad; it is penetrated by the divine logos that causes it to divide itself into the
four elements: light, ascending fire and air, and heavy, descending earth and
water.49 Nature is indeed referred to as ‘the will of god’ that imitates the divine

41 Corp. Herm. 1.12–14; 8; 10.14; 11.2–4, 20; 13.2, 14; Ascl. 7, 10, 31; Def. Herm. 1.1. See also Alc.
Didasc. 28, with the commentary of Dillon, Alcinous. The Handbook of Platonism, 171–176.
42 Corp. Herm. 1.12ff.
43 Ibid., 12.1.
44 Ibid., 16.10–16; Stob. Herm. 6.10; Ascl. 5.
45 See Denzey Lewis, Cosmology and Fate, 112 ff.
46 Ascl. 24, 37–38; see also van den Kerchove, La voie d’ Hermès, 185ff.
47 Corp. Herm. 1.4.
48 E.g., Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 171–173; classic passages include Ir. Haer. 1.2; Ap. John
nhc ii,1.9–10.
49 Corp. Herm. 1.5.

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world in its own creation.50 Later in the creation process the human nous
descends from above and is embraced by nature, who goes on to produce seven
hermaphroditic humans, a process that is called ‘a wonder most wondrous’, and
thus hardly a fall from grace as that of Adam and Eve, as many commentators
would have it.51
Likewise, in the Korê Kosmou, nature is created by god and is so exceedingly
beautiful that the other gods are terrified of her.52 Together with “toil” (ponos)
she begets a daughter, “discovery” (heuresis), who is given command of the mys-
teries of heaven.53 The allegorical meaning is probably that the discovery of
nature and of the mysteries of heaven comes only through toil. The connec-
tion between nature and mystery is here vital; indeed, the primary use of the
term “mystery” (Grk. mysterion, Lat. mysterium) in the Hermetica is to denote
the hidden essences of natural phenomena.54 This preoccupation with hid-
den essences also comes to the fore in the so-called technical Hermetica, texts
attributed to Hermes Trismegistus dealing with the “occult sciences” of astrol-
ogy, alchemy and magic.55 The notion of hidden sympathies between heavenly
bodies and stones, metals, plants, sacred names, etc., as well as methods to dis-
cern and manipulate these sympathies, is crucial in these texts, such as the
Cyranides and the Holy Book of Hermes to Asclepius, which are essentially lists of
recipes for astrological medicine (iatromathematika).56 The exact relationship
between the theoretical Hermetica and the technical ones is still somewhat
unclear, although Garth Fowden sees a tighter relationship between the two
corpora than what was postulated by A.-J. Festugière in his still crucial volume
on the occult sciences.57

3.3 Imagination and Mediation

In his explanation of this element, Faivre uses as an example the Hermetic
notion of inscribing the world in the nous, known from the treatise On the
rebirth. The disciple (Tat, in this treatise) is expected to ‘see himself in the

50 Ibid., 1.8.
51 Ibid., 1.14–16.
52 Stob. Herm. 23.10.
53 Ibid., 23.13.
54 See Bull, ‘The Notion of Mysteries in the Formation of Hermetic Tradition’.
55 See Festugière, La révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste, vol. 1; Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes,
57ff.
56 See Kaimakis, Die Kyraniden; Ruelle, ‘Hermès Trismégiste: Livre sacré sur les décans’;
Festugière, La révélation d’ Hermès Trismégiste, 1:139–143, 201–216.
57 Festugière, La révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste, vol. 1; Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes, 76–78.

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all’ and to identify himself with the cosmic mind.58 The process leading up to
this is that ten divine powers are summoned from above by Hermes, and then
enter into Tat, who is instructed to behold them as they descend to him.59 A
creative imagination is thus demanded from the disciple, as well as the ability
to inscribe the experience within himself, possibly a form of mnemotechnique,
as Faivre suggests.60
The faculty of imagination is also presupposed in passages where Hermes is
told by his nous to imagine himself as ubiquitous:61

And thus conceive (noêson) from yourself, and command your soul to
go to India, and it will be there faster than your command. Command
it to move on to the ocean, and so it will yet again be there swiftly, not
as if it moved from place to place, but as if it is there. Command it also
to fly up to heaven, and it shall not lack wings. No, nothing hinders it,
neither the fire of the sun, nor the ether, nor the circuit [i.e. the Zodiac],
nor the bodies of the other stars [i.e. the 7 planets], but cutting through
everything it flies up until the uttermost part of the corporeal. If you
should wish to break through this entirety and see what is outside (if
indeed there is anything outside the cosmos), then it is possible for you.
…
If you do not make yourself equal to god, you will not be able to
conceive of god; for like is conceived by like. Make yourself grow unto
an immeasurable magnitude, having leapt out of every body, and having
transcended all time, become eternity (aiôn), and you will understand
god. …
Bring together all the sensations of created things inside yourself—fire,
water, dry, moist—and be simultaneously everywhere—on earth, in the
sea, in heaven, not yet born, in the womb, young, old, dead, after death—
and having conceived all this at once—times, places, things, qualities,
quantities—you will be able to conceive of god.62

58 Corp. Herm. 13.11, 13.

59 Ibid., 13.8ff.
60 Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism, 13.
61 Imagination can be differentiated from fantasy in that the objects imagined are consid-
ered to be ontologically real (see van den Doel and Hanegraaff, ‘Imagination’, 615).
62 Corp. Herm. 11.19–20; see Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, 31–33, 198–199,
for Ficino and Bruno’s readings of this passage.

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The Hermetist makes himself like god by means of his imagination, that is,
by exercising the faculty of nous (noêson). By imagining himself as comprising
the entire cosmos, he becomes identical to eternity (aiôn), which is itself the
nous that creates and upholds the cosmos.63 Were such visionary experiences
sought after in reality?64 We have indications that they were, in the Discourse of
the Eighth and the Ninth, the crucially important Hermeticum that was found in
the Nag Hammadi codices (nhc vi,6). In this treatise, the disciple asks Hermes
to be brought up to the eighth sphere, the Ogdoad, beyond the seven planetary
spheres and above the corporeal cosmos, just as nous prescribed for Hermes,
in the quote above. In the course of the ensuing dialogue, the disciple indeed
ascends to the Ogdoad, and attains a vision of the Ennead, the ninth sphere
above it. Interestingly, as means to attain this (Faivre’s “mediation”) we find
Hermes employing magical names (nomina sacra) and strings of vowels meant
to be uttered musically (voces magicae). These are techniques common in the
spells of the magical papyri, in which we also find a recipe for a ritual assuring
visionary ascent, the so-called Mithras-Liturgy, which was in fact probably
affiliated with Hermetism.65 In my view, this parallel makes it likely that the
kind of guided meditations that we find in On the rebirth and Discourse of
the Eighth and the Ninth were not only literary fabrications but reflect actual
practices.

3.4 Transmutation: The Rebirth

It is the aforementioned rebirth that constitutes the complete transmutation
of the disciple in the Hermetica. One reborn is no longer the one he or she used
to be: ‘The god begotten by god will be a different kind of child, the all in all,
composed by all powers’.66 The process begins by a preparatory period in which

63 Corp. Herm. 11.2, 4.

64 Hanegraaff (‘Altered States of Knowledge’, 159–160) critiques Festugière for discounting
visionary experiences with reference to La révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste, 1:309, dealing
with the literary fiction of revelations. However, this is a misrepresentation, for Festugière
on the very same page speaks of the reality of the visionary experience of Thessalos of
Tralles, and elsewhere he opines that passages such as Corp. Herm. 11.19–20 were probably
rooted in real experience (ibid., 4:149). See Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes, 111–112, and
Mahé, ‘La voie d’ immortalité’, 361–365, who both agree that such experiences were the
goal of the way of Hermes.
65 pgm iv.475–820; see Betz, The “Mithras Liturgy”, 35–38; Bull, ‘The Tradition of Hermes’,
423–435. See however Meyer, ‘The “Mithras Liturgy” as Mystery and Magic’, 447–464, who
thinks the ritual is derived from Mithraism, while Zago, Anonimo: La ricetta di immortalità,
27–34, inclines towards Pythagoreanism.
66 Corp. Herm. 13.2.

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the candidate estranges himself from the world.67 Several other Hermetica can
have been used for this purpose, namely the texts in which the disciple learns
that the inner noetic human is something alien to the body and the material
world.68 Then, in the rebirth proper, a period of silence precedes the invocation
of ten divine powers that oust twelve material tortures, which enforce the rule
of astral fatality over the corporeal human.69 The ten powers are unified as one,
and now constitute the new human, who is said to be a god and son of god.70
At the end of the process the one reborn is reintegrated with the cosmos from
which he had earlier alienated himself:

Now that I have been made unwavering by god, O father, I am visible not to
the vision of eyes but to the noetic efficacy of the powers. I am in heaven,
in earth, in water, in air; I am in animals, in plants; in the womb, before
the womb, after the womb, everywhere!71

The disciple has first been separated from the material world, then transformed
by the descent of the divine powers, and finally reintegrated with the world,
in fact he is now identical with the cosmic nous. He is no longer perceived by
corporeal eyes, since he is no longer identical to his body but now has a higher
and more authentic form of existence.

3.5 Concordance: Egyptian, Jewish and Greek Elements

This first of Faivre’s two optional elements of esotericism is not really present
in the Hermetica. There is no doctrine of the fundamental unity of the core
of the different religions, although there is a syncretistic tendency, seen in the
use of Egyptian imagery, Jewish elements such as the Kedusha, and of course
Greek philosophy. One passage implies the existence of a universal logos that
is present among several peoples:

Hermes: The logos is common to all humans, while each animal species
has its own sound.
Tat: But even among humans, O father, the logos is different for each
people?

67 Ibid., 13.1.
68 See Bull, ‘The Tradition of Hermes’, 206–236.
69 Corp. Herm. 13.8 ff.
70 Ibid., 13.14.
71 Ibid., 13.11.

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Hermes: Yes it is different, son, but the human is one. Thus also the
logos is one, and it is translated and found to be the same in Egypt, Persia
and Greece.72

As so often in the Hermetica there is here an ambiguity of the word logos, which
can mean both word, teaching and rational faculty. The idea is that the capacity
for reasoned speech is what distinguishes humans from animals, and that this
capacity can be found among all people. In the next passage of the treatise we
learn that the logos is an image of god, and all peoples are thus admitted this
divine element, which can however be realized only by following the Way of
Hermes.

3.6 Transmission: The Tradition of Rebirth

As already stated, the term “Hermetism” here refers to the Hermetic ritual tra-
dition, and the notion of tradition is central to esoteric discourses.73 The emic
claim of the Hermetica is that they derive from a primordial revelation of the
first Hermes,74 which seems to have been forgotten and later rediscovered by
a second Hermes, who passed on the tradition to his successors. Naturally,
the claim to be in possession of a tradition going back to the gods cannot be
entertained historically, but is a discursive strategy meant to elevate one’s own
religious identity above rival claims, as for example those of Jews, Persians and
Chaldeans in antiquity.75 Kocku von Stuckrad correctly diagnoses this strategy
for claiming knowledge but exaggerates the inapplicability of the term “tradi-
tion” to denote it, on the Foucauldian grounds that it implies diachronic con-
tinuity.76 However, when one teacher hands over a ritual to his pupil, who also
passes it on, there is some degree of continuity, even if this continuity seldom
extends as far back as is claimed. It would therefore make sense to distinguish
between actual tradition, denoting the process of passing on rituals and ideas,
and the rhetorical claim to possess an ancient and inviolate Tradition, going
back to authoritative ancestors.77 The latter claim serves to strengthen and

72 Ibid., 12.13.
73 See Kilcher, Constructing Tradition, ix–xvi.
74 Stob. Herm. 23.5.
75 Bull, ‘The Tradition of Hermes’, 21–28, 56–57; van den Kerchove, La voie d’Hermès, 50–55.
76 Von Stuckrad, Locations of Knowledge, 25–42.
77 Following the influential anthology of Hobsbawm and Ranger, Invention of Tradition,
scholars have tended to view tradition as substantially a myth of legitimization, as von
Stuckrad and the contributions in Kilcher, Constructing Tradition. However, Hobsbawm
himself saw invented tradition as a set of practices ‘which seek to inculcate certain values

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stabilize the often messy process of diachronic transmission. The relative sta-
bility of papal succession, for example, is motivated by the claim to pass on
the office created by St. Peter, despite the historical vicissitudes of the actual
successions.
In On the rebirth we find talk of the “tradition of rebirth”, which entails that
the spiritual father acts as a sort of midwife of rebirth (Gk. genesiourgos) by
calling down the ten powers that constitute the new human.78 Furthermore, in
the Discourse of the Eighth and the Ninth, we find a description of the order
of the tradition: first one must study the Genikoi and Exôdiakoi (possibly a
corruption of the Diexodikoi mentioned by Cyril of Alexandria), two genres
of texts likely referring to respectively basic and more advanced teachings.79
Thereafter it is necessary to be born again, and only then can one come to
understand the Ogdoad that reveals the Ennead. In other words, rebirth is a
necessary prerequisite to ascend beyond the seven planetary spheres and per-
ceive the eighth and ninth spheres with the mind.80 This is the culmination
of the ritual tradition, or the “Way of Immortality,” as it is called in this trea-
tise.

4 The Utility of the Term Esotericism for Understanding Hermetism

So far we have seen that all the central elements of Faivre’s historical definition
of Esotericism can be found in the Hermetica, but that is hardly surprising
since Faivre claims the Hermetica as historical precursors of his conception
of Western Esotericism. Indeed, the phenomena studied by Faivre emerged
partly as a result of the reception-history of the Hermetica, and there is thus a
filiation of Western Esotericism from the Hermetica.81 Faivre’s six elements are
ideas that were present in the Hermetica, as I have shown, and adapted from

and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the
past’ (The Invention of Tradition, 1).
78 Corp. Herm. 13.22, 13.4, respectively.
79 Mahé, Hermès en Haute-Égypte, 1:132; Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes, 97ff.; van den Ker-
chove, La voie d’ Hermès, 66–72.
80 See Bull, ‘The Tradition of Hermes’, 319ff.; Hanegraaff, ‘Altered States of Knowledge’, 149ff.;
contra Mahé, ‘A Reading’, who considers the Discourse of the Eighth and the Ninth also to
reflect a rite of rebirth.
81 On homological as opposed to analogical comparison and the application of Faivre’s
elements, see Asprem, ‘Beyond the West’, 25–26. Of course I do not mean to imply that
the Hermetica were the only source of these elements.

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there by some enthusiastic readers from the Renaissance on. Interesting studies
could be (and have been) conducted on the permutations of these ideas in later
authors.82 However, this diachronic approach yields few new insights into the
meaning and original context of the Hermetica. Instead it might be fruitful to
operationalize “esotericism” as a typological concept, that is, a specific type of
religious behavior.83
Whether we approach the Hermetica in light of terms like “Gnosticism”,
“mysticism”, “philosophy”, “mystery cult,” or indeed “esotericism” will color our
understanding of the phenomenon, since each term tends to place the Hermet-
ica in relation to different corpora of texts, practices and ideas. For example,
when John Dillon in his seminal The Middle Platonists considered Hermetism
as part of the “underworld of Platonism”, the implication is that the texts belong
to the margins of philosophy, together with such texts as the Chaldaean Ora-
cles.84 On the other hand, when Hermetism is considered to be a form of
“pagan Gnosticism” in several introductions to Gnosticism,85 then the texts
are placed at the margins of those texts labeled as Gnostic, which are them-
selves commonly exiled to the margins of Early Christian and Judaic studies.86
As mentioned above, the labels “philosophy” and “Gnosticism” have been used
as “dogma-finding devices” to locate two irreconcilable strands of Hermetism,
one monistic and the other dualistic. Misuse of the term “Gnosticism” (itself
highly contested) in particular has led scholars to look for purportedly Gnostic
features in the Hermetica, such as the “redeemed redeemer,” or the oppression
of the inner human by malevolent world-rulers.87 Unlike the term “gnostic”, the
term “esoteric” has the advantage of being neither a polemical term nor a term
of self-definition in antiquity.
Of course, the danger remains that by looking at the Hermetica through the
lenses of “esotericism” we will simply generate another reification of “esoteri-
cism”, giving the impression that esotericism is something that exists in reality
and that Hermetism is one of its manifestations. Therefore it is important to
state that I follow scholars such as Hanegraaff and von Stuckrad in seeing eso-
tericism not as a phenomenon “out there” to be studied, but rather as an ana-

82 See, e.g., Moreschini, Hermes Christianus, 214–244, on François Foix-Candale’s interpreta-

tions of the Hermetica.
83 See Hammer, ‘Esotericism in New Religious Movements’, 449.
84 Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 389–392.
85 E.g., Pearson, Ancient Gnosticism, 275–276; Rudolph, Gnosis, 25ff.; Pétrement, A Separate
God, 463–468.
86 See King, What is Gnosticism?
87 E.g., Rudolph, Gnosis, 120–121.

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lytical tool useful to interpret historical phenomena.88 As Jonathan Z. Smith

has argued, such categories and concepts are useful and indeed necessary in
order to create fair and representative reductions of the phenomena we study;
the utility of such reductionist concepts and categories is that they can be used
to facilitate cross cultural comparison, although with the caveat that the wider
social and cultural contexts of the phenomena to be compared must be taken
into consideration, so as to avoid parallelomania.89
One such paradigmatic study is Hugh B. Urban’s study of Indian tantric mys-
ticism and French freemasonry in the 18th century, in which he operationalizes
the concept esotericism in order to highlight interesting similarities in these
two religious practices, while taking their different social settings and cultur-
ally embedded meanings into due account.90 Urban shows how the tantrics
and masons have similar social strategies that are characterized by (1) the cre-
ation of a private social space, (2) the claim to possess deeper insights into
canonical texts than outsiders, and (3) rites of initiation designed to create a
new human being, which is a prerequisite to gain access to the social space
and deeper insights. Properly utilized, I will suggest, Urban’s typological con-
cept of esotericism can be used to elucidate Hermetism in a way that Faivre’s
six elements cannot.
Indeed, Urban seems to be on the right track when he takes an etymo-
logical approach to esotericism, which he derives from the Greek adjective
esôteros, meaning “interior”, or perhaps rather esôterikos, “inner, esoteric”. The
latter term was used by doxographers of the Roman era to differentiate between
public (exôterikos) and secret (esôterikos) teachings in philosophical schools.91
Drawing on Georg Simmel’s treatment of the dialectics of secrecy,92 Urban
thus sees the creation of a private social space as one strategy characteristic
of esotericism. However, he underlines the “Janus-faced” quality of this social
space; on the outside, the members are respectable citizens, adhering to soci-
etal norms, whereas an entirely different ethos can be followed within the con-

88 Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy; idem, Western Esotericism, 3; von Stuckrad,
Locations of Knowledge, 43–64; idem, Western Esotericism, 9ff.
89 E.g., Smith, Relating Religion, passim.
90 Urban, ‘Elitism and Esotericism’; see also Hammer, ‘Esotericism in New Religious Move-
ments’, who also has a typological approach to esotericism characterized by five elements.
An overview of historical and typological approaches can be found in Asprem, ‘Beyond the
West’.
91 Galen, De plac. 3.4.12; Luc. Vit. auct. 26; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 5.9.58; Iamb. Vit.
Pyth. 17.72.
92 Simmel, ‘The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies’.

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fines of the group. Although we possess no external evidence attesting to the

existence of Hermetic groups, the texts overwhelmingly give the impression of
a group of insiders who define themselves in contrast to the ignorant crowd: the
Hermetists follow the way of life and immortality, whereas the many follow the
way of death.93
Groups that are not usually dubbed “esoteric,” such as guilds of artisans
or diplomats, also make use of the common social strategy of secrecy. It is
thus paramount to distinguish between different kinds of secrecy, as does
the Egyptologist Jan Assmann, demarcating a secretum (something that is
hidden from common view) from mysterium (something that is intrinsically
secret).94 A secretum, such as a secret recipe or a confidential letter, is no
longer secret if it is published, whereas a mysterium retains its aura of secrecy
even if exposed. A mysterium can only be known by those with the requi-
site faculty or status. The kind of secret possessed by esoteric groups is the
mysterium, and an understanding of this mysterium often necessitates a specu-
lative hermeneutics of canonical texts, Urban’s second strategy. Practitioners
of tantra and masons both claim to possess deeper insights, into the Vedic
texts and the Bible, respectively, than do outsiders. However, if we take this
to be a characteristic feature of esotericism, we would have to exclude Her-
metism, which does not recognize any other canon than the books of Hermes
and his teacher Poimandres.95 This marks a clear difference between Her-
metism and those phenomena commonly labelled esotericism, which for the
most part are to be found in historical contexts with a strong sense of tex-
tual canonicity. Apart from the Jews, people in the ancient world did not have
a notion of a divine legislature set in a textual canon.96 The closest parallel
would be the Homeric corpus, which indeed was subject to allegorical read-
ings.97
Yet we need not reduce this hermeneutic activity to the reading of texts;
the main importance seems to me to be the claim of possessing a special
faculty, exclusive to the in-group, that permits the possessor to gain deeper
insights than what is available to outsiders. Such claims are common in Her-
metic literature, which describes this faculty as the divine nous, united with

93 E.g., Corp. Herm. 1.29.

94 Assmann, ‘Das verschleierte Bild zu Sais’. See also Bull, ‘Hemmelig tekst’.
95 Corp. Herm. 13.15; 16.1–2; Stob. Herm. 23.7–8, 66.
96 The Persian Avesta was probably not yet canonized (thus Stausberg, ‘The Invention of a
Canon’).
97 Hägg, ‘Canon Formation in Greek Literary Culture’, 111–113; Finkelberg, ‘Homer as a Foun-
dation Text’, 91–96; Lamberton, Homer the Theologian.

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the human nous during the rite of rebirth.98 Once gained, the initiate has
the power to see with the eyes of his nous, and his perception then becomes
quite different from that of the crowd. Not only does he have the power to
see god by rising up to heaven, but he can also see the cosmos as a man-
ifestation of the divine.99 For example, the crowd sees intercourse between
male and female as something frivolous and laughable, since they lack insight
(gnôsis) and knowledge (epistêmê), whereas the Hermetic initiate is able to
see it as a mystery, an image of the creative, androgynous father.100 Not only
do the Hermetists distinguish themselves from the ignorant crowd, however,
but also from contemporary philosophies, which are derided as empty chat-
ter and sophistry, as opposed to the “true philosophy” of Hermes.101 Regular
philosophers are mere rationalists (logikoi) and do not possess the divine nous
as well.102
As already mentioned, this ostensibly exclusive noetic faculty of the Her-
metist is gained during the rebirth, and this corresponds to Urban’s third social
strategy, namely the creation of a “new human” in rites of initiation. This is of
course a well-known phenomenon in the history of religions, most famously
studied in the works of Victor Turner, but Urban emphasizes that the rites of
masons and tantrics are considered to give the initiate superhuman power,
setting them ontologically above the uninitiated outsiders. This superiority is
gained by inscribing the hierarchical structure of the cosmos on the human
being, thus making the micro-cosmos of the human similar to the macro-
cosmos. Now, this is precisely the effect of the rite of rebirth, as portrayed in
On the rebirth (Corp. Herm. 13), discussed above as Faivre’s element of transmu-
tation.
The distinct advantage of Urban’s three elements versus Faivre’s six, to my
mind, is that the former represent social strategies, while the latter are points
of doctrine. Widely dissimilar doctrines can be used as part of similar social

98 Contra Grese, Corpus Hermeticum xiii, 97–98, who thinks that the human has no nous
before the rebirth. However, the double nous, human and divine, is attested elsewhere
(Corp. Herm. 10.18–19, 23–24; Def. Herm. 8.4), and Grese has to excise some text (Corp.
Herm. 13.2: kai tês noêtês; 6: mou tou noêmatos) to make his theory work. See Bull, ‘The
Tradition of Hermes’, 140 ff., 245 ff.
99 Stob. Herm. 2a, 6; 7.3 (theoptikê dynamis); Corp. Herm. 5.3.
100 Ascl. 20–21.
101 Corp. Herm. 16.2; Ascl. 12–13.
102 Corp. Herm. 4.4–6. Most scholars—wrongly, in my view—interpret this passage to state
that the logikoi and the alogoi are the same people, which would make little sense. See
Bull, ‘The Tradition of Hermes’, 193 ff.

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strategies, which therefore have a more universal, cross-culturally comparative

potential. By considering esotericism as a strategy for a group and its members
to gain social prestige we can come closer to the lived reality of the humans
behind the texts, instead of becoming lost in their (often convoluted) meta-
physical speculations. This is especially so in the case of the Hermetica, where
the actual authors have totally disappeared behind the pseudonym of Hermes
Trismegistus and his associates; since we have little external evidence of the
lived reality of Hermetism, we must try to deduce it from the social strategies
we perceive to be at work in the texts.103

5 Conclusion

It has been the aim of this article to reflect upon the utility of the term eso-
tericism in the study of ancient Hermetism, and conversely on the role of
Hermetism in the scholarship of Western Esotericism. It has been shown that
all the central elements of Faivre’s definition of Western Esotericism can be
found in the Hermetica; this has allowed us to highlight certain salient fea-
tures of Hermetism, though their detection has not really yielded fresh insights
into the phenomenon. However, it has been suggested that operationalizing
esotericism as a typological concept, in the manner of Hugh B. Urban, may
illuminate the social formative potential of the dialectics of secrecy, initiation
and revelation. Further, since we have little historical data on the actual prac-
ticing Hermetists in the ancient world, such a typological concept allows us
to postulate a plausible social setting for the texts, on the basis of compar-
isons with other esoteric traditions we are better informed about, for instance
Urban’s Indian tantra-practitioners and French masons. It is as such a compara-
ndum that ancient Hermetism has a role to play in the scholarship of Western
Esotericism; although the textual remains of the Hermetic tradition would be
foundational for Western Esotericism after Marsilio Ficino, any link to the rit-
ual tradition was broken about a millennium earlier. As Kocku von Stuckrad
has pointed out, the claim to possess an inviolate Tradition, going back to an
authoritative founder, is a typical rhetorical strategy of esoteric literature, and
should properly be considered as an invention of tradition.

103 See Bull, ‘The Tradition of Hermes’, 375–469.

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