The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus

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[LyricFox]

Title:  The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus Author(s): Florian Ebeling Publisher: taca:  Cornell University Press, Publication Date: 2007 ISBN: 0801445469 ISBN-13: Current Price and More Info from Amazon

From the Bryn Mawr Classic Review:
This book is a revised version of Ebeling's dissertation (the Heidelberg Egyptologist Jan Assmann was his supervisor) and it offers a concise history of Hermeticism from antiquity up to and including the twentieth century. It is a wide-ranging subject that is competently covered by the author.

Read the full review at the Bryn Mawr Classic Review web site.

Additional Description:
Perhaps Hermeticism has fascinated so many people precisely because it has made it possible to produce many analogies and relationships to various traditions: to Platonism in its many varieties, to Stoicism, to Gnostic ideas, and even to certain Aristotelian doctrines. The Gnostic, the esoteric, the Platonist, or the deist has each been able to find something familiar in the writings. One just had to have a penchant for remote antiquity, for the idea of a Golden Age, in order for Hermeticism, with its aura of an ancient Egyptian revelation, to have enjoyed such outstanding success."--from the Introduction

Hermes Trismegistus, "thrice-great Hermes," emerged from the amalgamation of the wisdom gods Hermes and Thoth and is one of the most enigmatic figures of intellectual history. Since antiquity, the legendary "wise Egyptian" has been considered the creator of several mystical and magical writings on such topics as alchemy, astrology, medicine, and the transcendence of God. Philosophers of the Renaissance celebrated Hermes Trismegistus as the founder of philosophy, Freemasons called him their forefather, and Enlightenment thinkers championed religious tolerance in his name. To this day, Hermes Trismegistus is one of the central figures of the occult--his name is synonymous with the esoteric.

In this scholarly yet accessible introduction to the history of Hermeticism and its mythical founder, Florian Ebeling provides a concise overview of the Corpus Hermeticum and other writings attributed to Hermes. He traces the impact of Christian and Muslim versions of the figure in medieval Europe, the power of Hermeticism and Paracelsian belief in Renaissance thought, the relationship to Pietism and to Freemasonry in early modern Europe, and the relationship to esotericism and semiotics in the modern world.

Special Notes:
none

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Discussion and reviews of this book are welcome in this thread. If you've read the book, please tell us what you think of it and why.

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